#they were human

[a-scary-lack-of-common-sense]

I think you might have been a father to me, once.

You used to be more than just another man who hurt me in my life.

Reference pic!

[problemnyatic]

the steven universe hate is insane bc people are (or at least were) more upset that fictional war criminals got fictional hugs than they recognize that it singlehandedly advanced queer rep in children's media by lightyears and then straight up ate heavy retaliation for the nerve.

It does have real flaws that are worth discussing, but it also put their male protagonist in dresses and skirts and played it straight and even empowering, they aired a lesbian wedding on television, it was a genuinely queer, genuinely diverse piece of media through and through. It did a lot of real good for the real world.

But also the fictional characters caused fictional harm to other fictional characters, and didn't get an onscreen firing squad sentence. So, you know, it's basically ontologically evil in real life.

[flufflecat]

thinking about ford "human blood tastes better" pines

ford "i have been desiring blood more than usual" pines

stanford "was bitten by a fruit bat but still wrote the sentence 'i have been desiring blood more than usual'" pines

[doom-dreaming]

"when i was your age, i was working three jobs to help support my family" and "when i was in college i was sleeping on a mattress on the floor and living off of soup"

YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE HAD TO DO THAT. NO ONE SHOULD HAVE TO DO THAT. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN TO YOU THAT THIS ISN'T A CHARACTER-BUILDING LESSON, IT'S JUST BAD

[gampix]

Guilt.

[ink-the-artist]

Love the contrast between the Americans’ “Apollo” and the Soviets’ “Sputnik.” You got the Americans naming their rocket after a Greek god trying to communicate the grandness and importance of this rocket. And you got the Soviets naming their rocket “fellow traveler.” Like a friend you go on an  adventure with together. This rocket is our little friend lol 

[hamletthedane]

I was meeting a client at a famous museum’s lounge for lunch (fancy, I know) and had an hour to kill afterwards so I joined the first random docent tour I could find. The woman who took us around was a great-grandmother from the Bronx “back when that was nothing to brag about” and she was doing a talk on alternative mediums within art.

What I thought that meant: telling us about unique sculpture materials and paint mixtures.

What that actually meant: an 84yo woman gingerly holding a beautifully beaded and embroidered dress (apparently from Ukraine and at least 200 years old) and, with tears in her eyes, showing how each individual thread was spun by hand and weaved into place on a cottage floor loom, with bright blue silk embroidery thread and hand-blown beads intricately piercing the work of other labor for days upon days, as the labor of a dozen talented people came together to make something so beautiful for a village girl’s wedding day.

What it also meant: in 1948, a young girl lived in a cramped tenement-like third floor apartment in Manhattan, with a father who had just joined them after not having been allowed to escape through Poland with his pregnant wife nine years earlier. She sits in her father’s lap and watches with wide, quiet eyes as her mother’s deft hands fly across fabric with bright blue silk thread (echoing hands from over a century years earlier). Thread that her mother had salvaged from white embroidery scraps at the tailor’s shop where she worked and spent the last few days carefully dying in the kitchen sink and drying on the roof.

The dress is in the traditional Hungarian fashion and is folded across her mother’s lap: her mother doesn’t had a pattern, but she doesn’t need one to make her daughter’s dress for the fifth grade dance. The dress would end up differing significantly from the pure white, petticoated first communion dresses worn by her daughter’s majority-Catholic classmates, but the young girl would love it all the more for its uniqueness and bright blue thread.

And now, that same young girl (and maybe also the villager from 19th century Ukraine) stands in front of us, trying not to clutch the old fabric too hard as her voice shakes with the emotion of all the love and humanity that is poured into the labor of art. The village girl and the girl in the Bronx were very different people: different centuries, different religions, different ages, and different continents. But the love in the stitches and beads on their dresses was the same. And she tells us that when we look at the labor of art, we don’t just see the work to create that piece - we see the labor of our own creations and the creations of others for us, and the value in something so seemingly frivolous.

But, maybe more importantly, she says that we only admire this piece in a museum because it happened to survive the love of the wearer and those who owned it afterwards, but there have been quite literally billions of small, quiet works of art in billions of small, quiet homes all over the world, for millennia. That your grandmother’s quilt is used as a picnic blanket just as Van Gogh’s works hung in his poor friends’ hallways. That your father’s hand-painted model plane sets are displayed in your parents’ livingroom as Grecian vases are displayed in museums. That your older sister’s engineering drawings in a steady, fine-lined hand are akin to Da Vinci’s scribbles of flying machines.

I don’t think there’s any dramatic conclusions to be drawn from these thoughts - they’ve been echoed by thousands of other people across the centuries. However, if you ever feel bad for spending all of your time sewing, knitting, drawing, building lego sets, or whatever else - especially if you feel like you have to somehow monetize or show off your work online to justify your labor - please know that there’s an 84yo museum docent in the Bronx who would cry simply at the thought of you spending so much effort to quietly create something that’s beautiful to you.

[bruxoide]

DREW SPAMTON WITH STICK AND FIRE

[astraystayyh]

this post actually broke my heart.

[camilleflyingrotten]

Another Good Omens Faeries AU

[theshadowrealmitself]

I like to think that Vulcans who come to understand that Humans just can’t try to process emotions the same way as them, it’s just healthiest to let it out in harmless ways, decide that venting and stuff should be taken just as seriously as Vulcan’s meditation time, and will encourage the Humans around them to complain about what’s upsetting them

People who are used to aloof Vulcans who avoid Humans at all cost running into one comforting a Human

“-and then they said my cheesecake was subpar, and they didn’t even bring a dish!!!”

“The purpose of this event was that every participant brings a food item of sorts, correct?”

“Yeah!!”

“And they did not follow this rule while insulting dishes that were brought?”

“Mostly just my dish but yeah >:(“

“How illogical”

“That’s what I’m saying!!!”

[flagellant]

yeah we might be brothers in christ but so were cain and abel so shut the fuck up before i decide to find a rock about it

[bet-on-me-13]

The cult of...Danny Fenton?

So! Way back when Danny first moved into his new neighborhood in Gotham, he had some trouble controlling his Powers. The different Types and Levels of Ectoplasm in the air when compared to Amity had thrown off his control.

He was used to being in places where his Ectoplasm meshed well with the Atmosphere, like a Water Balloon in a Pool, but in Gotham that analogy would be closer to a Water Balloon in the sewers. It was too different from what he was used to to fully control his Powers.

So it's understandable that he messed up a few times and his neighbors found out about his Abilities.

They took it well at first, Danny wasn't going to go Rogues or anything, and he never used them maliciously, but eventually they got curious.

They asked what his limits were, how he got them in the first place, and what the hell the Ghost Zone was. The answers "None Really", "I died and was reborn", and "A Collective of every Afterlife at once" did spark some interesting reactions from them.

Most importantly, a few of them joked about him being an Eldritch God that they needed to worship. He was good enough friends with them that at that point they felt comfortable pranking eachother, so they did just that.

Danny woke up one day on his birthday, and saw all of his friends and neighbors surrounding the makeshift Throne they had made and put him on while he was asleep. The entire day they chanted stuff like "The Great One requires Ms. Smiths Apple Pie for his day of birth!" And "The Great One Wishes for us to sing the Ritual Song! Happy Birthday to You! Happy Birth-"

After his birthday, they kept up the joke.

It didn't help that his powers had evolved Again! And now he could bestow abilities onto his friends. The jokes they made about their God granting them Supernatural Powers to rule the world with were insufferable.

Then, one day while he was just resting at home, watching a movie on his TV, he felt a Pull at his Core. The same kind of Pull whenever he was being summoned. But why would they summon hi- Oh Shit! It's Mr Jenkins Party today! He was supposed to meet them at the Warehouse they used for special events an Hour Ago!

He quickly accepted the Summoning, but was met with a suprising sight. His Neighbors all tied up in a pile to his right, a spilled table of party food to his left, and right in front of him, Batman and his Family watching him with wary eyes.

Slowly, he opened his mouth. "...so, did you come for the party or..."

[burrowingdweller]

1) Width. Add it.

2) Width. Just. Yeah. If you want to draw a really big guy - do it. The third guy is ok, but it's just a small guy with belly!

3) Gravity! More fat - more soft - gravity goes brr.

4) Basic shapes and clothes would definitely help you to draw a big comfy soft guy!

Miaou

[apollos-olives]

before october 7th this blog was a meme page btw.

[bixels]

End-of-Splatoon thoughts.

Thinking about how since the very start, Splatoon has had a feature where players can draw and post artwork and spot them as graffiti on walls or billboards. Or how the weapons have always been paint brushes and rollers and ballpoint pens. Since its inception, Splatoon has been dedicated to engaging its players with the act of creation and creative expression, showing them how their art can build communities and (literally) change the world.

Thinking about finding golden human-made music discs buried underground for thousands of years, and a grand finale music festival. About the Voyager Golden Records. About those human handprints etched into concrete in Alterna. Did those human artists know it would end like this? First a fiery death and then, eventually, a worldwide celebration of music to represent our shared past, present, and future. Did they know that their songs, insignificant in the face of extinction, would one day become the solution that will save the next dominant life-form from the same fate?

Thinking about how eerily similar the Octarian domes are to Alterna. About how close Inklings and Octolings were to repeating the same mistakes as humans. But their doomed fates were undone not by some miracle technology or military power or a rocket, but by music.

Thinking about how humans wiped themselves out with war, and our parting gifts were liquid crystals that somehow paired with the DNA of primeval inklings and somehow infused them with our memories and culture and a Song. And 12,000 years in the future, that same Song will end a war.

Thinking about how art and music and punk culture and rock & roll and friendly competition and petty arguments and water guns aren’t uniquely human concepts, but the fundamental qualities of intelligent life. An inheritable spirit that can cross evolutionary bounds.

Thinking about the theme of Splatoon, that art and music and fun will not die with the human race. That every piece of art we create is a seed we sow for future generations to reap. That our legacy is ingrained into the crust of the earth. That long after we’re gone, the oceans will remember, and they’ll pick up where we left off.

Thinking about how Splatoon says that the essence of humanity –– the thing that will outlive us –– isn't war or prejudice or destruction or greed, it's a song.